William Edward Laughlin

 

William Edward Laughlin (1856-1933)

My Great-Grandfather

Our family arrived in Texas in 1855.  At the time, James McClellan Laughlin and his wife Mary Green Ross Laughlin, had one son.  Not long after settling near Bartlett, Williamson County, in the central part of the state, my great-great-grandmother Mary Green, gave birth to twins (1856), one named John Needham Laughlin, and the other, my great-grandfather, William Edward Laughlin.  These three young boys would be the first of what would eventually be seventeen children for James and Mary Green.  Yes, that’s no typo…Seventeen.  (When I discovered that, Mary Green became one of my heroes!)

 

Texas being Texas, one of the major economic activities was raising cattle.  Texas was and is a great place for it.  But in those days, there weren’t that many people in Texas, meat processing plants had not been built locally yet, so the only way to sell cattle for consumption in the U. S. Northeast, was to walk the animals Northward, around 600 miles (1000km) to the existing rail heads in Kansas, where they could be shipped by rail to places like Chicago.  So, in 1870, at the ripe old age of 14, William Edward set off on his first Cattle Drive.

 

Making a total of three such trips, he later became a member of The Old Time Trail Driver’s Association, which took down the stories of many of the old cattlemen.  Those accounts were compiled into a book, entitled The Trail Drivers of Texas, first printed in the 1920’s, later reprinted in 1985 by The University of Texas Press, Austin.

W. E. was a man of few words, so it’s easy to transcribe the full text of his comments here:

 

Three Times Up The Trail,

by William E. Laughlin, Bartlett, Texas

I made my first drive in 1870 with John Ellis from Live Oak County to Fort Worth. 

In 1877, I made a drive with the Durant cattle from Williamson County to Taylor County.

I made my third drive in 1880 with Soules and Armstrong from Williamson County to Ogallala, Nebraska.  We began making up this herd in February, started the drive in April, and reached our destination the following July.  The drive was made from Williamson County to Callahan; there the International Trail was taken up and we went by way of Fort Griffin, thence west of Fort Sill, across the Indian Territory, going into Kansas just East of Fort Elliot, and across the state by way of Fort Dodge, and on to Ogallala.

Indeed, a man of few words.  He never was known to ramble on.

My grandfather owned a cow or two along the way.  My father has owned cattle for 40 years or so, and I have owned a few here and there, enough to qualify (in my humble opinion) as a fourth generation Texan and cattleman.

My father found a copy of that old book, in quite a surprising way that is a story in itself.  He bought it, in 1986, when my son, also named William Edward, was about to have his first birthday.  Dad wrote down the account of how he found the book, on the inside flyleaf, and entrusted it to my care until William was older.  Now that my granddaughter is about to have her second birthday, it’s about time that I dust off the old book and pass it to her daddy.

                                                                         Y’all take care.

-          Mark William Laughlin, Grandfather